1. [n]  impractical romantic ideals and attitudes
2. [n]  an exciting and mysterious quality (as of a heroic time or adventure)
3. [n]  a movement in literature and art during the late 18th and early 19th centuries that celebrated nature rather than civilization; "romanticism valued imagination and emotion over rationality"

Romanticism
Romanticism was `a way of feeling` rather than a style in art. In the period c. 1775-1830, against the dominant political, religious and social ethos of the day. Their quest was for personal expression and individual liberation, and in the process, the Romantics transformed the idea of art, seeing it as an, instrument of social and psychological change. In this comprehensive volume, David Blayney Brown takes a thematic approach to Romanticism, relating it to the concurrent, more stylistic movements of Neoclassicism and the Guide Revival, and discussing its relationship with the political and social developments of the era. He not only looks at how artists as diverse as Goya, Delacroix, Friedrich and Turner responded to landscapes or depicted historical events, but also examines artists such as David and Ingres who are not usually considered Romantics. As a result, the reader is given a clear understanding of a complex movement that produced some of the greatest European art, literature and music.

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